Idaho County free press. [volume] (Grangeville, Idaho Territory) 1886-current, 1887-11-25
[ GLORIOUS COUNTRY.

Many time and oft in every season
of the year have l travelled the stage
road between Lewiston and the prairie,
but never without detecting some new
beauties or gaining fresh ideas about the
resources of our country. There is such
q diversity of scenery, varying and
changing like the hues of the kaleido-
scope, that the time passes pleasantly in
contemplation of its beauties. The
meadows on the mountain are ever
green, and the dark plumed pines which
fringe them give an added relief to the
eye. 1t is ride wherein sun and
stream and meadow and summer days
shine brightly in the view, with not
dark tint in all the sparkling picture--a
deep blue sky unsullied by cloud, and
teeming with brilliant light, where the
healthy mountain air falls like breath
from angels, while the sky, dimmed
only by excessive distance, sheds its
placid smile over all the beautiful land
scape.
But charming as is the ride across the
mountain it is, as 1t were, speaking fig
uratively, only the matutinal cocktail
which braces the appetite for the COM
ing repast. For as you rise the Cotton
wood hill Fair as a garden of the
Lord" the prairie lies before you-all
below glowing in rich gold and green,
while
1.-THE mountains that enfold
In their wide sweep the colored landscape
round
and gold
That guard enchanted ground"
How astounding the contrast. There
are the mountains all around us, huge
and massive, dark and sombrous below
is the valley, robed in radiant sum mer
costume, with grain fields waving and
rustling in the breeze, flowers smiling
in the sun, and fruit laden trees bending
under the weight of luxuriant album
dance. Coleridge wrote his famous
Ode to Mont Blanc under the inspira-
ton of a scene that is commonplace
compared to the lovely and majestic
picture which unfolds its panoramic
beauties to the traveller from the crest
of Craig's mountain.
Nor does nearer inspection dispel the
illusion, for as the traveller proceeds he
is carried across the undulating prairie
with rich, deep black soil, bordered
with grain and hay fields and gardens
and orchards and settlements, and after
seeing these things he is not long in
deciding that Camas prairie is land of
wealth, fruit. beauty and lovliness, and
further acquaintance will impress upon
him the fact that it's people are as gem
erous as the soil which yields such
plentiful harvests. Such journey
taken in the late summer season has all
the lights and shades of panorama,
and If the traveller hath vein of poetry
in his composition it will fill his heart
with vines and palms and flowers.
Homer sang of pellucid rills of waters
oozing from the gods Virgil, of cline
whose skies were as lovely as woman s
smile. and where fruits and flowers
were bedecked with eternal amaranth !;
Milton of world where beauty bloom
ed and smiled, and where a splendid
diadem crowned the whole; Young of
the rustling leaves in the moonlight air );
Dante, of a world whose immortal trees
had verdant stiffness, and where fas-
cinating music echoed among the
branches; Coleridge. of roaring cata-
racts and crystal cascades and goats
skiriing the eternal frost. Wordsworth
sang of flowers and his poems have a
floral cast. like the "sweet south wind
breathing upon bank of violets."
Pope and Wesley sang of reviyifying
themes aud ambrosial fruit. and these
men poured nature into their volumes.
Their glowing energy and lofty concep-
tions were taken from scenes not one
half SO inspiring as the glorious land
scape of Csmas prairie holds forth to the
lover OF Nature, and often do we long
for spark of the celestial fire necessary
to sing in poetic phrases of the local
beauties of our own fertile country,
more bewitching in it's lovleiness than
the famed hanging gardens of Babyl on.